Prohibition

1. Prohibition Mr. Goddard | PLUSH | Feb 2009

2. Prohibition = no alcohol • What you need to know • CA 11.5.3 – Understand the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act • Critical Parts • Early Prohibition • Prohibition and its effects • Repeal or End

3. Prohibition had been Around Temperance - total abstinence from alcoholic liquors. NOT DRINKING • Early Movements • Part One • Early 1800s • Interrupted by Civil War • Part Two – Stronger • 1870s Women’s Christian Temperance Union • 1895 Anti-Saloon League Progressive People • Protestant Churches

4. Urban/Rural Split • Understanding the DEEPING split or DIFFERENCE between the cities and the country areas of the country is really important. • In General: • Urban areas AGAINST prohibition • RURAL areas WANTED prohibition

5. Why the split? • Cities/Urban Areas • Immigrants did not see drinking as a sin • Alcohol made their awful lives bearable • Saloons were community centers • Rural/Country Areas • Scared of what was happening in the towns • Isolationism/Nativism connection because it was tied to the new immigrants in the cities • Crime, Poverty and Illness were seen as connected to Alcohol. RURAL – COUNTRY FARMERS OLDER AMERICANS URBAN – CITIES WORKERS IMMIGRANTS

6. RURAL URBAN

8. Effects of early movements • By 1917 about half of the states in America were DRY • They had PROHIBITED or made Alcohol use ILLEGAL. • Where: • West • South “The south is dry and will vote dry” Will Rogers predicted in 1926. “That is, everybody sober enough to stagger to the polls will”

9. The 18th amendment • All of this stuff led to an Amendment to Stop the drinking of Alcohol. • This was the 18th Amendment • Passed as a Resolution in 1917 • Ratified in 1919 when 36 of the 48 states ratified it. • Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. • Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. • Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress. The amendment itself did not ban the actual consumption of alcohol, but made obtaining it legally difficult.

10. Volstead Act • Passed in 1919 • Tried to Enforce the Amendment - The federal government had the power to enforce this law. • It attempted to ban the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol. • It “theory” the USA became ‘dry’.

11. Problems with Volstead act • In the beginning • saloons (bars) closed • Public drunkenness and drinking decreased • Later • People went to Speakeasies (illegal bars) • Bootleggers (smugglers) appeared • People disrespected the Law • The main problem with the Act was that there was never enough MONEY to really fund its operation.

12. What were the effects of prohibition? • Speakeasies • Moonshine • Smuggling • Organised crime

13. Speakeasies • Secret saloon bars opened up in cellars and back rooms. • They had names like the ‘Dizzy Club’ and drinkers had to give a password or knock at the door in code to be let in. • Speakeasies sold ‘bootleg’ alcohol, smuggled into America from abroad. • Before Prohibition there were 15,000 bars in New York. By 1926 there were 30,000 speakeasies!

14. Moonshine • A spirit made secretly in home made stills. • Several hundred people a year died from this during the 1920s. • In 1929 it is estimated that 700 million gallons of beer were produced in American homes.

15. Bootleggers • Smugglers called ‘Bootleggers’ made thousands of dollars bringing in illegal alcohol to America. • America has thousands of miles of frontiers so it proved easy. • Famous smugglers like William McCoy made fortunes by bringing alcohol from the West Indies and Canada.

16. Organized Crime • The enormous profits to be made attracted gangsters who started to take control of many cities. • They bribed the police, judges and politicians. • They controlled the speakeasies and the distilleries, and ruthlessly exterminated their rivals. • Since there was not a lot of money to enforce the laws, the raids and arrests were SELECTIVE and seemed like attacks on PERSONAL LIBERTIES • Many murders became celebrities in the eyes of Americans.

17. Al Capone • By 1927 he was earning some $60 million a year from bootlegging. • His gang was like a private army. He had 700 men under his control. • He was responsible for over 500 murders. • On 14th February 1929, Capone’s men dressed as police officers murdered 7 members of a rival gang. This became known as the ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre.’

18. People began to feel it failed • By the mid 1920s many Americans felt the “Experiment” had failed. • During the Great Depression people argued that it kept them out of work. • Political groups supported candidates that wanted to REPEAL prohibition • 1933 Congress passed the 21st Amendment which Repealed the 18th. • STATE governments now have control over alcohol laws.

19. REVIEW OF MAIN POINTS

20. What was Prohibition? • 18th Amendment outlawed the production of Alcohol • The Volstead Act enforced it • It banned the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol. • The federal government had the power to enforce this law. • It theory the USA became ‘dry’. • It has since become known as the ‘noble experiment’.

21. Why was prohibition introduced? • It already existed in many states • Moral reasons • Campaigners like the Anti-Saloon League of America • Early Prohibition Movements • Progressives • City versus Country Split